'Media played a hand in Hillary's defeat to Obama'

{image-Hillary+Clinton0wins01_3207032008_07062008.jpg news.oneindia.in}Washington, June 7: Hillary Clinton came close in her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, but failed when Barack Obama earned the last handful of delegates necessary for a win. Now, a new research has been published which shows that the media treated the two candidates differently right from the start.

The research was carried out by Erika Falk, a communications expert at The Johns Hopkins University, after analyzing the first month of campaign coverage in the nation's top six circulating newspapers - USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Denver Post and Chicago Tribune, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

From the analysis, Falk found that Clinton was more likely than Obama to have her legislative title dropped and be referred to by her first name or by her gender. She also found that Clinton was mentioned in just 65 percent of the number of articles as Obama: Eighty-four stories mentioned Obama whereas just 55 mentioned Clinton.

Only nine stories mentioned Clinton without mentioning Obama whereas 38 stories mentioned Obama without mentioning Clinton, the research showed. The analysis also revealed that Clinton had fewer paragraphs written about her than Obama did - 631 paragraphs were written about her compared to 934 about Obama and she was less likely to see her name in a headline than Obama.

"It is also true that if Clinton and Obama results are examined in historical context, it appears that Clinton did have more issue coverage than women who preceded her, but still had less issue coverage than a typical man," Falk said.

ANI